When it rains at Bryn Mawr, the campus completely transforms. First of all, you realize how many geese are on campus. On my way past Thomas today, I counted 47 geese on the green in front of Thomas alone. It was a goose party. Two of them were even playing tag.  Second, everyone who forgot to close their windows goes into a state of panic. 90% of the windows on this campus leak in the rain, but a good 75% of those windows have wide windowsills that people like to put art, plants or digital clocks on. When it rains, all of these things get soaked, which means that 66% of these things will be ruined. Third, you realize how cute everyone else’s umbrellas are. While I’m trudging along with my plain blue umbrella, the campus is festooned with owl-printed, polka-dotted, and rainbow striped umbrellas.

Despite the fact that everyone has cute umbrellas, and everyone leaves them outside the dining hall, or the library, or the gym so that they don’t track water everywhere, umbrellas don’t really get stolen. I’ve lost an umbrella before, but I’ve never had one stolen. I think this shows how well Bryn Mawr’s honor code works. Even though a person might be stranded in the library without an umbrella when it’s downpouring, and even though it suck to have to go outside without an umbrella, and even though there’s a whole pile of umbrellas just inside the door, people don’t take them. It’s just not nice, and then the person whose umbrella it was will be stranded without an umbrella. It’s an example of how people here really care about each other, and how they don’t do the easiest thing if it’s the wrong thing. The honor code is alive and well at Bryn Mawr.

It was alumni weekend this past week. For athletes, that meant that we got to compete with our old teammates again. For all Mawrters, it meant that we got to reunite with some of our friends who had graduated. The life of a Mawrter after graduation, be it two years down the road or twenty years down the road, is inherently interesting to everyone on campus. It’s also a little scary. What will we do once the chapter in our life titled “Bryn Mawr” (as it is in Katherine Hepburn’s autobiography) is over? Will we decide to keep going down the scholastic path, to med school or law school or some other graduate program? Will we instead decide to try our luck in the job market, to put our internship experiences to immediate use? Will there ever be another time in our lives when we will be able to watch this much Netflix?

After catching up with my friends who are currently trying to figure out the answer to all of these questions, I’ve realized that it’s never quite clear. Sometimes you figure out the answer one day and it changes drastically the next. Even those who have a plan still check the horizon every once in a while and find it completely different. They are always looking toward the future, adjusting their course and dreaming about what they could do better, how they can push the limits to become all that they can be.

At Bryn Mawr, we have time each semester to chart our path for the next few months. As I’m pre-registering for classes I’m checking that horizon again, adjusting my route based on the new goals that I have for myself and my future. I have new expectaions for myself; ways that I can be better and get the most out of my final three semesters in this extraordinary place. My friends who have graduated are doing that all the time. At Bryn Mawr we learn to look up, because you never know what might be on the horizon.

Graduating from Bryn Mawr doesn’t mean that you’ve made it; it means that you’ve just begun. Once you graduate there’s a whole host of challenges, ones that most likely won’t involve Plenary resolutions or the 7am shift at Erdman. But what we learn at Plenary will help us in law school, or even in navigating business politics, and working as part of the Erdman team is a valuable step on the way to working as a part of a functional unit in the future. What I learned from the alums is that while the point of Bryn Mawr is to prepare us for the future, the point of Bryn Mawr is also to be at Bryn Mawr. It’s important to enjoy it while it lasts, because graduation is just around the corner. But after that there’s still Sunday brunches on alumni weekend.

Last weekend, the cross country team participated in the Centennial Conference championship. It was a cold, rainy, windy day for a cross country meet. By the time all 319 runners had completed their races, the course was a mudslide. By the end of the day, racers and spectators alike were all soaked, and my team had to huddle together to help warm up the racers, who had run for 30 minutes in just tank tops and shorts.

Despite the weather, Bryn Mawr cross country had one of its best Conference finishes in a while, and definitely the best Conference finish that this generation of the team has ever seen. Last year, we edged Gettysburg by just one point, a point that could have come down to a matter of seconds in a 24 minute race.  This year, we beat them by 11 points, a difference that is not attributable to seconds.

In other news, track season is right around the corner. For some, it is already upon us. This Monday, I threw shot put for the first time in months, and it was a rude awakening. Based on the way my fellow shotputters have been gingerly lifting even the lightest of objects, I would say that it is a universal truth that even doing 500 pushups a week (a summer regime that lasted a surprisingly long time) and benching in a somewhat regular manner is not the same as heaving a 4k (8.8lb) iron ball across a field. Or, in my case, a third of the way across a field.  The difference between training for the 5k and training for every track event under the sun is stark. Gone are the arm lifts that consisted of 50 pushups. Gone are the squat lifts where I could squat low weights as long as I could do it 30 times. Now, it’s a whole new world of squatting my body weight in sets of 3 of the most intense movements I have made. I’m actually benching again, and I won’t be allowed to get away with using assistance on my pull-ups.

Where in cross country I ran in the pouring rain, I now throw in the pitch black. Each throw is accompanied by at least 2 minutes of shuffling around in the leaves in the field where we throw, punctuated by shouts of “I found it! …Nope, just a rock” because an iron shotput is hard to see under leaves at night. Soon I’ll be starting hurdles and block starts and long jump and high jump. My knees will collect bruises from hitting the hurdles, my shoes will fill with sand from the long jump pit, and despite all this I just can’t wait for track.